1. Year C / Christmas Season / Feast of the Holy Family
    Readings: Ecclesiasticus 3.2-6, 12-14 / Ps 128:1-2, 3, 4-5 (R/v cf 1) / Colossians 3.12-21 / Luke 2:41-52


    At the beginning of the Christmas Eve Mass, I carried Baby Jesus to the Crib. As I did, many in the pews turned their heads to look. They looked intently. Some smiled. Others trained their phones to take a video or photo. One or two children reached out to touch Baby Jesus. Indeed, everyone was looking out for Jesus.
     
    We all did because Jesus is the long expectant Saviour we prepared ourselves for this Advent. To welcome him not to the Crib but into our hearts, the real manger at Christmas and every day. In us and amongst us, He truly dwells. Isn’t this why we always keep looking out for Jesus?
     
    The act of looking features prominently in today’s gospel reading. The Holy Family is actively looking. Mary and Joseph went to look for Jesus when he was lost. They were anxiously looking for him everywhere, fearful they lost him. Finding him,  Mary said, “your father and I have been looking for you.” Jesus replied: “Why are you looking for me?” I imagine Jesus returning home and looking to Mary and Joseph to learn how to live and pray, to be obedient and grow in wisdom with God and others.
     
    The act of looking is also part of our family life. Parents look out for their children. Look to care for them. Look to forgive them. Look to affirm them. Look to delight in them. Children too look at their parents and godparents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and even each other. Look to learn how to live and care, to be good and loving, to be faithful to God and loyal in relationships. This is the message of the first reading.
     
    The life of the Holy Family is our life too – filled with unexpected problems, anxiety, and suffering. Yet in how Mary and Joseph look for Jesus God gives us a pattern to live as faithful Christians. Let’s consider.

    Mary and Joseph’s anxiety as they look for Jesus is our anxiety when we are distant from him. Our worry grows when too many days pass and we seem to lose him. 

    So, we search for Jesus, looking to find him again. We pray harder, perhaps longer, when we cannot find Jesus in prayer.  We challenge ourselves to be more like Jesus, selfless and giving, when we find ourselves becoming self-centred and self-absorbed. We seek Jesus out in a retreat, a talk with a spiritual director, even in conversation with fellow parishioners when our lukewarm faith slides us into complacency. We humble ourselves and seek Jesus’s forgiveness when we sin. Even here and now, we have sacrificed other wants to come to Jesus in the Eucharist at this time; we do because we need Him.
     
    Mary and Joseph remind us that finding Jesus is hard work. They teach us to persevere, stay focused and be determined in our search. They instruct us to trust  God to find Jesus and where to find him: in God’s House, the  temple, where he is teaching the elders. Finding Jesus like this astonishes us too: “Did you not know I must be busy with my Father’s affairs?” he asks.
     
    Jesus himself teaches us how to look for him. We do, when we like him, seek to be in God’s presence. When we like him, choose to be obedient to God. When we like him, let God nurture and grow us in His wisdom. Consider the many times we have imitated Jesus and found ourselves growing to become more like Him, the fullness of God’s image and likeness. Others will look at us and judge how Christian we are by our life and our love. What will they say?
     
    Looking for Jesus also enlarges where we look for him, how we find him and what new understanding we learn through our encounters with him. 
     
    Listen to this story of St Benedict and the novices. They were praying before the manger in their chapel on Christmas Eve. There was a loud knock. No one got up. Everyone was focussed on the Infant Child. The knocking got louder. No one moved. They were all adoring Jesus. The knocking continued incessantly. St Benedict got up, opened the door and let a beggar into their midst. He prayed beside them. When prayer ended, the beggar disappeared. "Where is he? Who is he?"  the novices asked. "He is Jesus," St Benedict said. "He came to pray with you and for you. You didn’t really look."
     
    The novices had to learn how to experience divine presence, obedience and growing in wisdom within the community they are – with each other and with Jesus as one with them, one amongst them, one for them. We too live in a community we call ‘family,’ as we do in our many communities. In all of them,  we need to learn to become a family of God.
     
    Jesus, Mary and Joseph had to learn to become this holy family. Their story is more than just losing and finding Jesus. They had to take time to understand who their son, Jesus, really is and who they had to be for him and each other.
     
    “So it is with us too,” Pope Francis notes, adding: “Every day, families have to learn to listen and understand one another, to walk together, to face conflicts and difficulties. It is a daily challenge and it is overcome with the right attitude, through simple actions, simple gestures, caring for the details of our relationships. And this too helps us a lot in order to talk within the family, talk at table, dialogue between parents and children, dialogue among siblings.”* And can I add, to talk and laugh, live and love with God.

    Wise are we to learn to look for Jesus in our midst; He shows us how to live as family and  especially as God’s family. We can when we make St Paul’s exhortation to clothe ourselves in the love of Christ our family way of life. Then, we will live and care with heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. When we do this, we make Jesus’ presence alive in us and amongst us.

    Knowing Jesus is with us will calm us to live. Even more, He will be our satisfaction and delight to live life more fully, even joyfully. Isn’t this what every Christian family needs? Does yours?
     
     

     

    * Angelus for the Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday, Dec 26, 2021


    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Irish83 on Unsplash

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  2.  
    Year C / Christmas / Solemnity of the Nativity of our Lord (Christmas Midnight Mass)
    Readings: 2 Timothy 4.1-5 /  Psalm 40. 2, 7-8a, 8b-9, 10, 11 / Matthew 5.13-19


    “From this time onwards and for ever, the jealous love of the Lord of Hosts will do this” (Isaiah 9.7b)

    This is how our first reading ends this most holy night. With Isaiah proclaiming the irrefutable truth of Christmas: that God has become man so that we can become sharers in his divinity (St Thomas Aquinas). This happened that first Christmas long ago. Tonight we believe this is happening too. 

    Christians celebrate this truth. We must. For we do not celebrate an ancient religious memory about God coming down to earth. Nor, a Bible story about Mary’s boy child, one like us, dwelling amongst us. It is much more than any art and film, song and poetry can express about that infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.

    What we really celebrate tonight is God’s self-giving love for you, me, and everyone. This truth is the incredibly good news, that unimaginable proclamation, that God’s love is unreservedly and gratuitously for all, no matter saint or sinner. It is therefore good and right that we rejoice and join the angels, singing: “Glory to God in the highest heaven and peace to all who enjoy His favour.”

    This joy will resound in every Mass throughout the Christmas season and into the new year. We will hear it in every reading, prayer and song. They echo this line from the first letter of St John: “In this, the  love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4.9). 

    We like these words about the self-giving love of God. In fact we are very comfortable thinking of God like this. Christmas heralds this joyfully: because God came, we can live with God and we can love like God.

    But if we’re a little more attentive to tonight’s readings, we will hear this more profound truth about God: He desires to be one with us. This is how His jealous love loves – so much that He gives His very best, His most precious, His singular treasure, His much loved Jesus, with whom we can have His life to the full.

    We don’t often think of God in terms of desire. Yet this is who God also is. We hear it whispered amidst tonight’s readings. St Paul declares to Titus that Jesus, God-wish-us, came so that we “could be his very own and would have no ambition except to do good.” And the psalmist cries out so loudly, so clearly, that “He comes / He comes to rule the world.”
     
    Hear this then: that God’s deepest desire is for Jesus to come and be the ruler of the world. Even more, He comes to be the ruler of our hearts so we can do good for God and others. To rule our hearts as King. This infant king the wise men sought, and finding him, prostrated themselves in homage. This king the shepherds adored, lying on no other throne but a dirty, soiled, messy wooden manger. This king who would one day lay down his life to save you and I, and everyone for God.

    Indeed, what else can our heart’s disposition be tonight but joyful? How else then can we respond but with praise? Praise for the faithfulness, goodness and love of God who makes his desire real in Jesus. Yes, Jesus came, not to visit and go. He came to  stay with us till the end of time.

    And God declares His faithfulness audaciously by wrapping Himself – pure and holy, mighty and all powerful – in  human skin.  Skin, fresh and supple, innocent and bright like the young. A little more dull, scaly and rough like adult skin scared by life’s burdens and worries. Wrinkled and dry skin like the aged. Skin, brimming with hope like the dreamers.

    God wrapped in our human skin. This isn’t some theological mambo-jumbo to spiritualise Christmas or make it intelligible. I want to suggest that this is the Christmas reality of being human and being human with God and one another. Then, we will know how to love as He has loved us. Consider.

    If others say your skin disqualifies you from being you and being here, Jesus in your skin says, “you're worthy and you're welcome.”

    If some say you are bad because you’ve disfigured your skin with wrong choices, bad habits and poor judgment, Jesus, in your skin, embraces you saying, “my sister, my brother, my friend.”

    If others distance themselves from you because your skin is pockmarked and wounded by sickness and disease, Jesus in your skin says, “I hear; I see; be healed.”

    If the older people ridicule you for your fresh, youthful, innocent skin, Jesus in your skin says, “I believe in you and the good you are.”

    And if you are young and dismiss the old, Jesus in your skin says, “wise are they who honour their elders; they’ll find the way to God.”

    If your skin is injured by hurts, pains and regrets, Jesus in your skin promises you will be with him always and he will make all things new.

    If your skin is a mask you hide behind, Jesus in your skin will help you shed it so you can be your true self and shine.
    If your skin is soiled by sin, Jesus in your skin wants you to know that there is nothing he cannot forgive.

    If your skin makes you a nobody to many, cast aside to the margins, ignored, Jesus in your skin says, “You are somebody; you are mine.”

    And even if you have done nothing this Advent to clean up your skin, refresh and ready it for Him, here is Jesus in your skin, simply for you.

    Yes, God wraps Himself in human skin because this is how much he desires to be one with us. And he does because our human skin is simply very good for God himself. 

    Let us marvel then at the miracle of the Incarnation, of God partaking in our very flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. This is that cause for great joy, that kind of exhilaration that inspired Elizabeth’s unborn baby to leap and shout when Jesus, in Mary’s womb, came visiting. 

    Indeed, isn’t this the same delight you and I must have this Christmas? 

    So let us pray that your heart and my heart, that all our hearts, will skip a beat tonight, as it also must each day this Christmas and every day after, because now more than ever, we know so surely and so joyfully that we’re always in the holy presence of God. He is with us. Amen.



    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    photo: imagevine.com

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  3.  
    Year C / Advent / Week 4 / Sunday
    Readings: Micah 5.1-4a / Ps 80 (R/v 4) / Hebrew 10.5-10 / Luke 1.39-45
     
     
    “Why should I be honoured with a visit from the mother of my Lord?” (Luke 1.43)
     
    This is Elizabeth’s exclamation when Mary visited her. It’s really her recognition that God, and no other, was visiting her. She knew this truth when her son, John, leapt in her womb. I’d like to imagine John’s leaping as his way of letting Jesus know he was there and ready to do his part in God’s plan for salvation.
     
    In the Visitation story, we see the visible sign of God’s fidelity in the lives of both women. This reminds us that God really desires intimate, loving relationship with humankind. Elizabeth’s exclamation tells us so: “Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.”
     
    Th Visitation, like the Annunciation, reveals how God intervened in the lives of both women to bring about good. Mary became the mother of God. Elizabeth bore a prophet who converted many to God. Hasn’t God also intervened in our lives to bring about just as much good?
     
    At the heart of the Visitation is the profound intimacy of these two, faith-filled pregnant women with the Word of God. It’s an intimacy that God laboured for.  We glimpse this when  St. Augustine of Hippo writes :
    You called, Lord; you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You shone and dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew a breath and I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.
    Truly, the breath of God’s fragrance was upon Mary and Elizabeth. With that breath they hungered for God’s Word to come. When it did, they became pregnant with God’s Word to be carried and birthed. I wonder about God’s breath of the Holy Spirit in our lives and all the marvellous things He wants to do for us.
     
    For Mary, the power of God’s intervention sends her to care for a pregnant Elizabeth. Then, it helped her give birth to Jesus for all peoples. From that point onward, Mary cared for every person with a mother’s love, as she did with the apostles at Pentecost.
     
    Mary could do all this this because God swept her up in his own urgent haste to reach everyone to love and save them. Such is the power of God’s intervention. If we are honest, we too have been caught up in God’s haste – every time we love or forgive another, care and uplift the needy, accept all those society shuns, even delight in that one who nobody values.
     
    God’s own haste, Pope Francis, writes, “urged Mary to open the door and go out…to set out on her journey to her cousin. She chose the unknowns of the journey over the comforts of her daily routines, the weariness of travel over the peace and quiet of home. This is the risk of faith that makes our lives a loving gift to others over placid piety.* Mary risked herself to care for Elizabeth. Will we do the same?
     
    We need to risk like Mary. Then, God can bring about His good in our world, even more, for everyone through each of us. So, let us risk ourselves for whomever God wishes us to go to can care for. Risk all the more so that God can have us do this in the manner He wishes us to do, especially, for the lesser and the lost, the forgotten and unknown, the small and insignificant. Like Bethlehem-Ephrathah, “too small to be among the clans for Judah.”
    We must risk because it is precisely in such places and with these people that God will bring about great things, like peace for everyone, a Messiah who saves, and a shepherd who cares. Yes, sister and brothers, risk yourselves this Christmas for someone else.
                                                                                                                                                
    Now, as much as God uses us to care for others, He also works through many to bring about much good in our lives. We have all experienced this. Shouldn’t we then join Elizabeth and cry out, “Why should I be honoured by the mother of the Lord”?
     
    It is however not enough to confess this. We must welcome God who comes to us through those many. Comes into the dimness and emptiness of our souls that we often hide. We dare not tell others our deepest thoughts and feelings. We struggle to be honest and vulnerable. We are too ashamed to be our truest selves. We hide our pains and hurts. We deny our failings and sins. We harden our hearts, afraid to admit “I’m not like you” or “I just want to be loved by you.” Sometimes, we even fear voicing dreams and hopes.
     
    Into these very spaces, God wishes to intervene and be with us. Make his home in us. Come and be born in us like He did that first Christmas morning.
     
    How then can we welcome this child? Not with our cleverness or skills to analyse and rationalise. Dare I say, not even by ticking off the action items on the To Do List for Christmas like buying presents and going to Advent Penitential.

    Rather, welcome Him with child-like wonder. Only this kind of wonder will lead us to that threshold of contemplation we will make before Jesus in the crib. Not so much to see the child there but to enter into the life of this child seeing the world.** That is, seeing everything and everyone from God’s point of view, which is with love.
     
    When we dare do this, we’ll understand how God wants us for Himself. No matter how unworthy we think we are, God loves us too much not to welcome, accept and include us in His life. In fact this is what we’ll experience when we gather at the crib this Christmas. So standing there, look around; you'll discover all of us, so different in myriad ways yet together as Christians. Look too at the little one in that manger. He doesn’t come  to leave; He comes to stay with us always.
    Then, see Him stretching out His hands to us, His beloved. How else should we respond but to do the same – with our outstretched hands, not just individually but together, saying, “Why should I be honoured with your coming, my Lord?” Shall we?
     

    * Pope Francis, Homily, 15 September 2021
    **Inspired by the Trappist monks at Spencer Abbey, Massachusetts



    Preached at Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

     

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  4.  

    Year C / Advent / Week 3 / Sunday

    Readings: Zephaniah 3.14-18a  / Psalm: Isaiah 12.2-3, 4, 5-66  (R/v 6) / Philippians 4.4-7 / Luke 3.10-18



    “What must we do, then?”


    This is the question the repentant people asked John the Baptist. They asked because they want to live godly lives. We hear it in the gospel reading. John’s answer is clear and unequivocal; it gave direction to their lives. Beyond merely telling the people how to behave toward each other, it instilled an expectation in them for Jesus. He will show them the way, the truth and the life to God. This is the Good News.


    Jesus is indeed the “mighty saviour” in our midst, the Prophet Zephaniah proclaims. Truly, He is very near, St Paul teaches. Today’s readings emphatically declare that the Good News is not a message but a person—Jesus. And soon and very soon, He will come to be with us.


    Shouldn’t we then be keeping our gaze on Jesus at Advent time? Has it been challenging so far? It may be even more in these final weeks before Christmas. Many will be busy preparing materially for Christmas: shopping, cooking and partying. Many are preparing spiritually too, going from Advent prayer to Advent retreat to Advent recollection to Advent penitential because it’s the expected thing to do. In all this busyness, our hearts and minds may not be centered on Jesus. Our focus might be elsewhere.


    This is like how many approach presents. Too often, we focus on the gift, not the giver. We forget that the present in our hands is in fact another’s love and care for us. Long after I have torn apart the wrapping paper and found the gift, Mom’s presence will remain. And after the birthday guests have gone, the gift of the book I now read will remind me of my friend. Indeed, at the heart of every present we receive is the gift of another’s presence. I wonder whether the gift or the giver will be your focus this Christmas.


    Today is “Gaudete” Sunday. We wear rose-coloured vestments; these remind us to look ahead joyfully. We sing more upbeat Advent hymns; they cheer us up and on for the coming Christmas. Our readings explain why we must rejoice: God is truly coming to dwell amongst us. 


    Like when Zephaniah tells a timid, disheartened people and us that God comes: “Fear not, be not discouraged...God will rejoice over you with gladness.” Or, when the psalmist encourages us to cry out with gladness because we can hope that God is among us, and we need not fear or remain in sin anymore. And when St Paul teaches the squabbling Philippians and us “Be unselfish. Dismiss anxiety from your minds” because we can trust God who answers all our needs. And with John the Baptist, we hear this joyful news, pregnant with expectancy: the Saviour is very close. His name is Jesus. Yes, we have every right to rejoice.


    But for many who are burdened, suffering or despairing, how can rejoice? What good news is this when many are still hungry, still in poverty, still imprisoned unjustly, still gunned down senselessly, and still marginalized cruelly for race, gender, sexuality? For those hurt or sidelined by the holier-than-thou in our Church who’ve judged them never good enough to receive God’s mercy in communion and confession, what is Christmas but more pain, grief and exclusion? And for you and me who struggle to believe that Jesus is indeed coming for me, how can this be when my life is messy, my choices are bad and my way of life, sinful?


    Advent challenges us to see differently: with hope. That no matter what, God will come and save us, as we are. The individual burdened by anxiety. The selfish weighed down by ego. The troubled person because of sin. The small-minded man. The self-serving woman. The self-righteous believer. All these Christians, really you and me, struggle and fail with repeated sins and bad habits. Yet  we are the singular reason God comes – because He cannot be apart from us. He does not want to lose us. It goes against His divine nature if He does. For what kind of a God is Love if He who loses His beloved?

    Advent is therefore a most gracious and merciful season, pregnant as it always is with expectant longing. It affords us time and strength, hope and reason to take those first steps, once again, to move out of the darkness of sin and to journey into God’s radiant light that dawns with Jesus’ coming. 

     

    Advent cannot be about us waiting passively for God to come. It must be about us cooperating with God as He draws us towards himself. Towards and into His light that burns off those shadowy and sinful, melancholic and burdened parts of us. God wants to do this with the fire of love. And this fire is none other than the love of Jesus for us.


    This is John the Baptist’s message today. “I am baptising you with water, but there is one to come who is mightier than I,” he says. “He will baptise you in the Holy Spirit and in fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn in unquenchable fire.”


    John’s words should not scare us about who is saved and who is lost. Rather, they must encourage us to welcome Jesus as our Saviour. For the Jesuit John Kavanaugh, “Fire is not the fate of the lost, but the refining of the blessed. We all have our chaff, our dross, our waste. And the fire of Christ will burn them away.” Indeed, “the burdens we carry do not make us unfit for Advent’s message. They qualify us as prime candidates.”* 


    This is why we have every right to rejoice. Indeed, Jesus is coming soon. He is because we are worthy to be loved and saved for God himself. Even more, Jesus comes to make us more worthy, more perfect for God. Truly, how can we not rejoice, even more, be assured. we are God’s beloved?






    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart

    Photo by Nuno Silva on Unsplash


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  5. Year C / Advent / Week 2 / Sunday

    Readings: Baruch 5.1-9 / Ps 126.1-2, 2-3, 4-5, 6  (R/v 3) / Philippians 1.4-6, 8-11 / Luke 3.1-6



    “Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight” (Luke 3.4)


    This is John the Baptist’s call. We hear it every Advent. He calls the people to repentance and preparation for Jesus’ coming.  He goes into the desert wilderness of Judea to do this. 


    But here and now, in this Mass, he calls us into the wilderness of our hearts. That expansive, mysterious silent space deep within us. There, he searches us out as we await Jesus’ coming. There, he challenges, even demands, we straighten out the uneven, crooked shape of our lives. Are we doing this as we enter the second week of Advent?


    John’s call reminds us that the spirituality of Advent is not repentance. That is for Lent.* For Advent, we await Jesus expectantly, eagerly. Today we must honestly examine our longing for  God. Do we really want him to come into our lives, often messy? If we do, can we accept God coming in his time, not ours, in his way, not ours and according to his plan, not ours? The prayers, readings, and songs at every Advent Mass prepare us to do this.


    In contrast, the world demands we prepare differently. Focus on the material and commercial, it insists. Buy presents. Light up Orchard Road. Eat, drink and be merry. We’re Christians; we know this isn’t Christmas. 


    Today’s readings are therefore providential. They help us discern what must truly matter in our Advent preparations, and how we can do this.


    Advent and discernment. It seems odd to pair them together. Yet, we should if we yearn for God’s best for us. This is in fact St Paul’s prayer for the Philippians: “My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best."


    “Deepening our perception to recognise what is best.” This is what discernment is about. It enables us to appreciate the very best God wishes to give us. Advent helps us discern that God’s best is Jesus. Jesus who is God-with-us.  We ought to discern this to “become pure and blameless, and prepare…for the day of Christ,” St Paul teaches.


    How can we practice Advent discernment? By quieting ourselves, paying attention to God and relishing God’s saving actions in our lives and those around us and the world. 


    Today’s readings teach us how to do this.


    With Baruch, we hear how God will not abandon the deprived, desperate or disappointed. God will come to them with mercy and justice, and take off the mourning robes. God will then show all the earth how splendid they are as his own. 


    This Advent, let us look more charitably at all who suffer, especially those we have sidelined with our words and actions. Then, we might see how Jesus is faithfully labouring for everyone's wellbeing. When we do, we can appreciate Jesus as God’s hope for us, not once in history but now daily in our lives. 


    With Paul, we hear how God will complete the good work he begins in every Christian community. The Philippians were besieged by external forces and internal divisions. Yet God drew them together as a community and empowered them to spread the Good News.  


    This Advent, let us look at our families, schools, workplaces, and parish. Then, we might discern how Jesus never gives up on us, even when there are divisions, difficulties, and despair. When we do, we can celebrate Jesus as God’s joy to us, not once in history but now daily in our lives. 


    With Luke, we hear how God sends John the Baptist to care for the Jews and everyone. God wants all to receive salvation in Jesus. What humankind had hoped for generations and thought impossible, God makes possible and real with Jesus’s coming. 


    This Advent, let us look at how Jesus continues to accompany, care and uplift many, ourselves too. Then, let us recognise how Jesus's actions truly save everyone. When we do, we can believe that Jesus is God’s peace in us, not once in history but now daily in our lives. 


    Jesus as God’s hope, God’s joy and God’s peace. Advent waiting enables us to discern these truths. This will help us know who the child in the manger really is, even more God’s promised salvation he brings. We will when we hear and pay attention to God’s voice. He speaks simply and honestly. He proclaims that in Jesus, God is with us and God will save us. 


    God spoke this truth to the Jews through John the Baptist. Many heard and turned to God. Today, God is calling us to do the same. And God is also speaking through many who are like John the Baptist in our lives. They are the ordinary people around us, including the lesser and least. 


    Their voices are hidden amidst the loud and noisy, the mighty and powerful, even the holy and devout. They might be the habitual sinner, that person you hate, someone you are avoiding, like the divorcee or the gay Catholic, and maybe your enemy. It could even be someone who’s hurt you, like a loved one whose words and actions disappoint. Can you hear God calling you through them to Advent preparation? Yes, listen.  


    We must because God wants to come and put our lives in order this Advent. He will do this by labouring for our conversion through those around, even as He labours in us. This is how God prepares us to welcome Jesus; He is the way, the truth and the life to order our lives. All God wants is our "yes" to let Him do this. If we choose not to, we are the foolish ones. Our Advent will be lesser and poorer. Our Christmas will be mediocre, maybe joyless.


    So, let’s be wise and beg for the grace to discern how God wants to prepare us for Jesus’ coming. Even more, let’s humbly ask to be courageous. For when we are, we'll be open to God surprising us with this truth: that ultimately with Jesus, there is no wilderness in which we are ever alone. He is already with us.


    So let us pray, “Come, Lord, Jesus, come!" Shall we?




    Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart
    Photo by Ethan Sykes on Unsplash








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  6.  

    Year C / Advent / Week 1 / Sunday
    Readings: Jeremiah 33.14-16 / Ps 24. 4-5ab, 8-9, 10, 14 (R/v 1b) / Thessalonians 3.12-4.2 / Luke 21.25-28, 34-36.


    “For you are God my saviour” (Psalm 24.5)

    Here is the psalmist declaring who God is in our lives. Since Creation, humankind has yearned for God’s saving love. In Advent, we recall the Jews and their desire for the Messiah. Every Advent, Christians are invited to get in touch with our own longing for God. Do we?

    Advent is anticipation. Listen to Jeremiah’s excitement: “The days are coming when the Lord will fulfill the promise...He will raise up a just shoot...He shall do what is right and just in the land…and Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem secure.” 

    Advent is promise and prayer. Listen to St Paul’s desire: “May the Lord be generous in increasing your love and make you love one another and everyone.”

    Anticipation. Promise. Prayer. These express our Advent longing.

    The child in us waits eagerly for what comes after Advent, Christmas. For lights on Christmas trees and presents underneath. For Christmas carols in the air and the Christmas manger in Church to see. For Midnight Mass and family gatherings. And for arms that will reach down to lift us up in love. 

    Yet, like every child, we have fears. The unknown, the unmanageable, the treacherous all around us. The fear of being hated, ignored, forgotten. Now, the worry of possibly more sick and dead and even a prolonged pandemic because of the Omicron variant. 

    All we want is the familiar, the comforting, and the loving in our lives. Like a parent coming home, a friend’s comforting message, and even forgiveness again from those we have hurt. Could what we really need be the opportunity to hope?

    Advent focuses us on Jesus. He is our hope. He will fulfil our longing. 

    This is the message of today’s gospel reading. Even as Jesus speaks of the portents of the end times, he promises hope – “the Son of Man coming on a cloud.” We can indeed “stand with confidence before the Son of Man,” Jesus assures.

    We associate this image of standing with God judging us for heaven or hell. But “To stand with confidence before the Son of Man” is the most appropriate image to begin our Advent with. Doesn’t the Advent journey lead us to stand before the infant Jesus, adoring him in the manger, at Christmas? 

    How do we get there? By attending to our longing for Jesus.

    This involves waiting. We are however too busy to wait. We are all rushing about, doing everything quickly, and demanding instantaneous interaction with Whatsapp, Instagram, and Discord.  Often, we don’t wait properly for things to unfold, for relationships to develop, or for people to reveal their true selves. We want everything now.

    We rush about like the young boy who puts a candle to heat up a cocoon and open it, albeit gently. He wanted the butterfly to come out quicker. He was impatient that it was taking a long time to emerge. The butterfly finally came out but it couldn’t fly. The added heat had disturbed the process of the butterfly forcing its way out of the cocoon and so strengthening its wings for flying.

    The butterfly would fly if there was time to wait. Instead, there was haste and no respect or reverence for the process. 

    Advent means waiting. Waiting with reverence. For God to come to us in Jesus. For our longing to be fulfilled. For others to share our advent journey.  We have a part to play in all of this: we must make our hearts bigger for Jesus to come to birth in each of us at Christmas.  What is needed is time. To wait and to prepare. We must respect this.

    Yes, “before the messiah can be conceived, gestated, and given birth to,” Ron Rolheiser writes, “there must always be a proper time of waiting, a necessary advent, a certain quota of suffering, which alone can create the proper virginal space within which the messiah can be born.”*  Will we wait like Mary waited?

    In the coming weeks, we will be busy. Shopping for presents. Baking Christmas goodies and preparing for Christmas meals. Writing Christmas wishes. Decorating our homes. Gathering for Christmas celebrations, however, we can in groups of 5s. Even bringing Christmas cheer to the lesser. These might seem like Christmas has come and Christmas gifts opened early. 

    But on Christmas morning, would our longing for Jesus be fulfilled? Perhaps not because the process of advent waiting had been short-circuited. The needed time to attend to our longing had been truncated. There hadn't been enough advent.

    Our readings today propose we wait and prepare ourselves properly for Jesus’ sure coming. We can begin by acknowledging the longings within our souls for God: our unanswered desire; our anxious need; the questions we don’t have answers for.  Then, let us pray for God who knows everything to meet us in our longings. 

    If we dare do this, we will be grateful for the grace of advent longing. It is our opportunity to hope. To receive Jesus, there must first be some reverence to receive. To have a feast, there must first be some fasting. To appreciate love as a gift, there must first be some respect for Giver. This is why we must learn to wait – for God our Saviour, for love excelling to come down, for Christmas joy. Will we?




    *Ron Rolheiser, “Advent - A Time to Learn How to Wait”

    Preached at the Courage Advent Retreat, SFX Retreat Centre, Singapore
    photo: by Paul Gilmore on Unsplash
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    Labels: Advent Breaking Open God's Word
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"Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute way final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything."

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